More information to surveil and control air travelers

Today I submitted comments to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on behalf of a coalition of civil liberties and human rights organizations objecting to CBP’s proposal to expand the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) to require all travelers on international flights to or from the U.S. to provide an address in the U.S., two (!) phone numbers, and an e-mail address, and to prohibit or “recommend” that airlines not permit anyone who is unable or unwilling to provide this information to board any flight to or from the U.S.

As I explain in a post on the Identity Project blog at PapersPlease.org:

In return for collecting this information and passing it on to CBP, airlines would be allowed to retain and use it for their own purposes, without permission from travelers. Airlines would also be allowed (and in some cases required) to pass it on to foreign governments.

The proposed CBP rule would apply to all travelers, including US citizens (regardless of whether they reside in the US), visitors, and asylum seekers.

The proposed rule is far more significant and far worse than it appears at first glance.

Although the proposal is represented by CBP as a minor change to an existing program that would cost airlines nothing and impose no costs on travelers, it would cost the airline industry hundreds of millions of dollars and impose costs on would-be travelers, especially asylum seekers, that would be measured not only in dollars but also in lives. The proposed rule would also violate multiple provisions of the Privacy Act, including in ways that would force travelers to make personal information available to hostile foreign governments.

If you think it would be easy (although a nuisance) to come up with a “throwaway” e-mail address, some other people’s phone numbers, and/or the address of a hotel, think again. The purpose of the proposed CBP rule is, in part, to compare the data you provide with information in government or commercial databases, and to prevent you from boarding any flight to (or from) the U.S. if they don’t match.

As the comments objecting to the proposal note:

If CBP attempts to “authenticate” travel documents by comparing information provided by travelers with information in either government or commercial databases, it is likely that legitimate travelers will provide information that is deemed “incorrect” because it doesn’t match the information in those databases. Identity thieves, on the other hand, who have obtained information from those databases, are more likely than legitimate travelers to be able to provide APIS contact information matching whatever is in those government or commercial records. As a document “validation” methodology, collection of this additional information for purposes of comparison with government or commercial databases would be less than useless….

The highest per-person costs of the proposed rule would be imposed on asylum seekers.

Many asylum seekers will, of course, be unable to provide the information required by the proposed rule, even if they might, on arrival in the U.S., be able to obtain asylum.

It’s difficult to put a dollar value on asylum or on its denial. Every time someone obtains asylum, it’s a triumph of freedom over tyranny. How much is that worth? How much would you pay for asylum from a country in which you are being persecuted or reasonably fear persecution?…

Some asylum seekers, denied their right to travel by common carrier to potential sanctuary in the U.S., will attempt to travel to the U.S. by other means. Some of them will die trying. Irregular means of land or sea travel are dangerous….

Almost all of those who died in the desert or at sea could have afforded to fly, and would have done so but for CBP’s successful efforts to induce airlines to deny them passage in circumstances in which CBP has no authority to order the airline not to transport them.

Their deaths are solely and directly attributable to the U.S. government’s “carrier sanctions”.

As these sanctions are described in the NPRM, “if an air carrier boards a passenger who is then denied entry to the United States, the air carrier may have to pay a penalty.”

Instead of sanctioning airlines that fulfill their legal duty as common carriers to transport all passengers in compliance with their tariffs, the U.S. government should be sanctioning airlines that refuse to transport undocumented asylum seekers….

Carrier sanctions kill, and the proposed rule would increase the death toll.

For the gory details, see the complete comments submitted today to CBP by the Identity Project (IDP), Government Information Watch, Restore The Fourth (RT4), Privacy Times, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) or the excerpts in the Identity Project blog. There are links to more background information and my FAQs and explainers here.